Post by Walker on Jul 2, 2012 12:32:51 GMT
Much of this was posted on the Subversion forum. The initial purpose was to bring forward some of the strongest points from Zerzan and Tucker on anarchist primitivism and to also bring forward a stronger exposure of anarchist primitivism as a desire for a present resistance and future way of life. Though there might be much more that is needed for the drafting of this, it is my hope to begin sourcing and copy-editing what is below to make the message more clear as to what I'm aiming for. How I am challenging current anarchist primitivist, anti-civilization and green anarchist discourse. The primary message is one that examines the abolition of work and what ways of life could occur that may be able to lead to a full Zerzanian vision of the gatherer-hunter.
The dominant order and its power relations are the target. With the aboliton of work, civilization itself may begin slowly disintegrating and it is also my hope to show a way this may occur. It is also my desire to present how anarchy or communism may not actually abolish work because doing so could cause fear of the unknown and create a desire for the management of urban centers (i.e. the cities), compelling work to prevent a perceived threat to the fabric of society, whether true or imagined. Both scenarios may be weighed on, but will also be pointed out that it is speculative to view the present state of people as what will be in the future. Destruction of the dominant order also means destruction of the old relations of society. The forging of new relations in this process is also part of this process.
It is also my desire to expose that present resistance can begin to adapt two intentional communities for the sake of a resistance culture: The Nomadic and the Agricultural Commune. These ways of life need not emulate the past and perhaps would be better off to start such communities with the mindset of being for the destruction of the dominant order to shape their development. Last, it is my hope that using these two ways of life I can expose how they can hold a mutual relationship with each other and perhaps also share a mutual relationship with urban communes and other group/event/situations as they attempt to grow the momentum of subverting the dominant order.
-----------------
This is some beginning thoughts on a proposal for another anarchist primitivism. Mired in debates now considered old, divisive, laced with sectarianism and logical fallacy, anarchist primitivism, as an anarchist tendency, has been on the decline while various tendencies of anti-leninist/pro-situationist insurrectionary communism, insurrectionary anarchism, egoism and some forms of left anarchism have increased.
While platformist/specificist left anarchism has typically presented the largest criticism of anarchist primitivism, its tendency has declined in influence while anarchist syndicalism seems to be rising. In addition to this, a quick search of anarchist primitivist criticism quickly shows that platformist anarchist is not the only host of critique. Pro-situationists, insurrectionary anarchists, even nihilist anarchists have come out against various views of anarchist primitivism. While much of these criticisms are founded on misunderstandings, misinterpretation and abusing logical fallacies, it is clear that anarchist primitivism, as a tendency, has lost some major battles by not answering these criticisms.
In the United States, the IWW may be gaining ground as Occupy is either declining or transforming. Nihilist anarchists, on the flip side, are also gaining interest influenced by groups like the Informal Anarchist Federation of Europe and Latin America. The Coming Insurrection and Tiqqun gives libertarian Marxists and anarchists a second wind with attempts to call the existing resistance that once thought of itself as part of the Occupy movement a new thought, the thought of commune. These attempts to define their movements of attack as commune perhaps have captured the narrative of anarchists like no other present tendency. Whether these were the last throes of Occupy at its most militant and radical or whether these movements are preparing for another round of activity is still uncertain.
Repression after the NATO protests in Chicago has generated a new fear. A voice of Crimethinc attempts to show that a pattern of repression exists while I propose that the pattern only exists because the dominant order manufactures its existence. Even if anarchists were not attempting radical or militant activity, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies would still look through our population for signs of dissent to prop up and knock down.
It is the Summer of 2012 and several protests are lined up with the threat of the United State's first black president being voted out of power taking the momentum anarchists have generated and channeling this momentum towards efforts to defend the establishment from Republican hyperbole. The main stream media's recrafting of the Occupy movement's narrative as attempting to remove corporate money from politics is a difficult narrative to defeat as the curious seek out avenues of dissent.
This is where we are presently and anarchist primitivism has only played a marginal role in affairs, focusing more attention on another marginal movement, the deep green resistance movement, than on attempting to keep relevance in the present dialogue. John Zerzan's radio show, Anarchy Radio, speaks positively of the black bloc tactic, as do his guests. The Wild Roots Feral Futures gathering has already occurred, perhaps re-energizing the green anarchist movement, but will it do so in favor of anarchist primitivism or deep green resistance? This I'm uncertain of.
However, the loudest voices of green anarchy don't capture larger imaginations. It keeps attaching itself with views that look backwards rather than present-creating-future. Mired in activism and activist tactics, grasping to American indigenous movements without criticism, the voices for "decolonize" maintain white guilt (i.e. colonizer) viewpoints whether intentional or not. This creates the same problems as nationalism and only resists being pushed back rather than pressing forward. The values of yesterday, the values of today, will be destroyed in the crafting of values of tomorrow.
This sentimentality is found only in the losing vestiges of old culture not yet eliminated or assimilated into the dominant order. Certainly there is much that can be learned from these fading cultures and forgotten ways of life, but it is conservative to keep on about it. Meanwhile there is much more going on.
-------------
To move forward the discourses of anarchist primitivism it may be necessary to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the positions of its proponents and attempt to reconcile them with views that further strengthen the tendency. Opponents to anarchist primitivism have often gone out of their way to show bad faith, misquote, slant views and generally abuse logical fallacies in order to paint anarchist primitivism as a view hostile to people rather than hostile to civilization, hostile to systems of domination.
During the period where anarchist primitivist discourses were formed, there was a lot of focus from green movements on a civilization-ending collapse with entire movie genres focused on dramatizing such events and how they may result. Proponents of anarchist primitivism often accepted collapse as an inevitability, with some deciding to halt any sort of challenge to the present order and instead seek ways to successfully survive a scenario of collapse.
To survive as an anarchist primitivist, one would take on many ideas and views of previous primitivist societies and emulate their behaviors. The aim is mainly to produce a potential for the growth of gatherer-hunter bands that would be able to return to the wild of Earth when a collapse occurs. Even those that don't give collapse much merit present the gatherer-hunter life as a desirable one that is far less alienated than present society, so living as a gatherer-hunter, even partially, is wanted more than living in a technological egalitarian society. The process of becoming a gatherer-hunter is often referred to as rewilding.
Rewilding is a challenge to a civilization-based mindset often referred to as domestication. It is an attempt to offer skillshares and discussions that would expose a civilized mindset and why it is not desirable to continue living as civilized beings. Understanding wild foods, gatherer-hunter shelter-building, the use of tools, approaches to hunting, the lack of a specialized social structure, the use of spirituality and direct knowledge to understand the world around all are part of the process of rewilding.
--------------
However, the very basis of a collapse is teleological and scientific. In a way, by presenting the horror story of collapse, they have also contributed to the very technological system anarchist primitivists seek to overcome. Green technologies created by the supporters of the social order and various decentralized alternatives to the present technological system have attempted to develop in response to the threat of a collapse scenario. So yes, by saying that civilization will end, some anarchist primitivists and others that made collapse a point of discourse have scared the very systems of control into considering ways of controlling better to avoid collapse and/or to survive collapse.
By presenting the gatherer-hunter as the only unalienated being, anarchist primitivists have also contributed to marginalizing their own position. Again, civilization is made into a monster that inevitably grows in population despite the individual wishes of those that live in such a society. It presents any future with civilization as an alienated existence that can't defeat its own problems that will draw it into destroying the world and/or destroying its society. It also makes the society of civilizations seem unwilling or distant from its own ability to change its ways so that its methods of control can take on new forms that reduce their impact on the world.
While we can claim civilization as it is presented today having major problems, simply things like the education of women and offering of contraceptives show advanced nations on a slow population decline. This decline in the United States and Europe has created a reason to demand migrant work despite the desires of the greater population. This isn't to say all of the world is on a population decline at present. There is still many many nations that grow in ways that make the inevitability of population booms still seem a very real possibililty. But also, the present order has made it also possible to see this does not have to be the case and it is fallacy to say otherwise. Populations can reduce voluntarily, especially with female education (emancipation from a purely servile position in a family structure) and spread of contraceptives and other forms of birth control, both voluntarily and no so.
These declines in population present another world where the forced servitude of females may be seen as necessary in some future nation-states to continue competition in a world market and while this type of control is another form of alienation, it helps expose that other narratives of control that aren't seen at present are possible and show the threat of population size growing beyond the ability of the present order as not a point that is fully tenable.
------
The argument about population is clearly not the only reason for collapse to possibly occur. Other catalysts are necessary. Scarcity and how to overcome this problem could be argued and at present, we might not have a workable solution offered by the dominant order. However, my use of population is more a vehicle to move the discussion forward, to show that anarchist primitivism's use of collapse as an immediate threat is not a good reason to present anarchist primitivist as a viable option. If collapse is a more distant problem, a problem that goes into the realm of the unknowable, we still have many other problems with the present order that make the destruction of the present order a more immediate desire.
The threat of collapse may paralyze people that might otherwise find reason to attack. It served and perhaps still serves a good vehicle to learn more about how to become like a gatherer hunter and challenge the domesticated mindset that keeps society tied to civilization. But with it having less of a logical foundation, we can have other discussions. There are other lifeways besides gathering and hunting that can be discussed that don't necessarily continue the web of control technology has become, should its totality end.
There are ways of life that can be desired that can end present civilization and open avenues for a move towards gather hunter life through a generational approach. There are also ways of living that might not return society to pure gathering and hunting as it was practiced for thousands of years, but can still co-exist in a relative amounts of peace. This document isn't about presenting these alternatives (at least not at this moment), but rather it is an attempt to expose an attempt to move anarchist primitivism in a direction that is less scientist-founded and perhaps more desire/will-founded.
It isn't because gathering and hunting is the answer to our existence that we seek to destroy the present order, but it can be one of the many ways of living that can be sought should we destroy the present order. Rewilding and challenging domesticated ways of life is a path that is enjoyable. Removing human control over the wild is a process that must be wanted. Not because humanity is sacred, but because convincing humanity is possible should seek to free ourselves from systems of domination.
If we seek to destroy how society is controlled and create new relationships in this process, the need to control the wild to maintain undesirable ways of life may also end. People won't need to crawl around in mines and chop down forests to produce commodities. People can become open to discussions on how to interact with the world and aim to live life in sync rather than in control.
--------------
Anarchist Primitivist Methodology
One of my primary concerns is exposing the methodology of anarchist primitivism. While there are so many misconceptions surrounding the position, some completely fabricated and others slanted, it becomes confusing as to what is possible within this theory. This is an attempt to start speculating on possible ways to incorporate approaches that take into account much of anarchist primitivist theory.
Commune Civilization as rewilding
For the most part, using the origins gatherer-hunters as well as studying present day versions of this type of living show that many of the accepted social mores in society are questionable. The work ethic, religion, how society can be maintained and so on can be challenged, not just from this viewpoint, as if we must look backwards constantly to know what we are missing out on, but also looking to a present way of approaching the world.
When we rewild, it comes with the understanding that it is limited. Like urban gardening can't provide a fully sustainable method of agriculture for an urban population without massified systems which the social order would have to create, gathering and hunting also is not sustainable with mass participation. A society that is for anarchist primitivism, yet still stuck with massive population sizes would have to examine ways to reduce population and the amount of area used to maintain civilization. It would still need a technological system to achieve its goals, which would also entail a controlling behavior on the population, whether voluntary or coercive.
Breaking global economic interdependence on a massive scale and moving towards more autonomous living that requires less exchange of necessities would also require a massive management system starting from the municipal level in a confederal approach. Agricultural methods would still need vast amounts of land, though by reducing technological maintenance more people could move to commune styled living and assert their technological autonomy...deciding smaller systems of technology through a sharing of knowledge and using renewable resources that can be found in the local area as much as possible, the first few generations of commune living would be able to eventually free themselves from systems of interdependence if population levels continue to reduce.
If more localizing systems are embraced with voluntary eugenics, the commune civilization can slowly scale back, migrating into other communes to maintain when population levels drop so far that they can no longer reasonably maintain themselves. Meanwhile, rewilding, wandering, adventuring, nomadism, horticultural and other partial gatherer-hunter lifestyles could be encouraged to ensure the survival of existing sedentary communes, with some perhaps falling into gather-hunter lifestyles as the amount of area controlled by the commune civilization continues to reduce.
So a commune civilization would need Nomads to continue bringing material necessities that merchants used to handle. It would need a continued education on eugenics and why voluntary population reduction helps achieve the goal of create a smaller impact on the world. It would need a growing education on rewilding, with many communes perhaps rotating roles between gatherer-hunter and commune farmer. Finally, it would need a respect for gather-hunter territorial behavior or complete human abandonment of permanent occupation in the wild.
Problems with this approach are still the levels of management to achieve these goals and the ability to measure population reductions. Systems of technology would slow to a crawl or reverse as technological progress aims towards the dismantlement of civilization. Further problems would still exist as people may decide that returning to technology and progress is viable and egalitarian, they may place significance on an area and the ancestry of those that exist on it being sacred.
All of this is speculative, but this draft has been done with the idea that society has the potential to slowly rid itself of civilization. If not completely negate it, there might be a way to find a happy medium where natural living can be combined with agricultural living in various mixes. We might not ever achieve a fully unalienated way of life with such combinations, but we could have a free society that can practice life as they would like to. It would involve the abolition of work, with a reduction in the amount of labor needed to where desire and necessity would meet each other rather than compelled to a hierarch's conception of greatness at the cost of free will.
--------------
Towards Gatherer-Hunter: Early Generation - The Commune and the Nomad
It seems that in the process of challenging out domesticated lives we run into the wall of control that shows the vast number of limitations that prevents us from moving completely into the world we desire. Even in a world free of work, commodities and markets, we are still left with the after effects of the previous society. Nuclear power plants that need to be slowly ran down as to prevent melt down. Establishing a new infrastructure for human waste to prevent the continued poisoning of water and to remove the rationale of it already being poisoned, thus justifying other wastes to be dumped into lakes, oceans, rivers, streams.
Much of the green technology movement may have thought of and considered these possibilities, but their concept is more on alternative rather than reduction of these features. Without coercive labor, we recognize that much of this change in life would have to be grappled with. Technological infrastructure that relies on interdependent resources, like rare minerals, would slowly fall apart in a matter of years. Power plants, substations, water treatment plants, roads, sewers, these too may fall into disrepair. So we may be left with the idea that we may need to feel compelled to maintain these things to keep urban life going or we would feel compelled to abandon the large cities and find another way of doing things.
We can begin doing this now and for some, this is already occurring. I present the idea that the gather-hunter can be realized through the sharing of the commune and the nomad.
---------------
Again, I'll address the issue that what I'm doing is speculating on the future based on some given information from the present. With the abolition of work, what people are capable of voluntarily doing is still rather questionable. People sometimes forget we react to our environment and as our environment changes, we change with it. Heroes come into existence that challenges the idea of a self-centered egoism, showing an egoism that goes beyond, that appears altruistic to those more disposed to seeing a selfless desire come from individuals. My claim is that people are selfish, but what selfishness is to one may not be selfishness to others.
So many times I've done things, gone out of my way to help others. I've done so not out of some sense that I am altruistic, but in the sense that my egoism is about affecting the world around me, creating the world I want to live in. To encourage this world, I establish practices in my life that often aren't returned. If one searches for a "mutual aid" in my actions, typically my giving to others is not returned. Perhaps it feeds my narcissism. Perhaps I want to have something on others, so when the chips are down, I can call in favors. Perhaps I want to my effect on society returned to show that I've done a good job. There may be many conscious and unconscious reasons for acting for the sake of others by acting on selfish desires.
So if it seems that a city may starve to death, I might decide to rally others to the mines, to build the roads, to maintain the sewers. For me, such things seem possible. To others, it may seem that mechanisms of decision making need to be established to formalize this behavior. That is not my target. It seems unethical to me to aim for establishing institutions in society. This doesn't mean it won't happen. This also doesn't mean that such a society, though unethical in my view, could mean the re-establishment of a social order. But also it could.
Anyways, let us say that urban life presents an unappealing way to live, even if the cities manage to convince people to voluntarily give their lives to keeping them going. Humanity rallied to the cities because other ways of life were becoming less possible. By ending capitalism, by abolishing work, older ways of life can be opened again. People can again leave the cities and form communities that live lives with less specialization, less dependence on labor that presently seems very unappealing to me.
Going forth, people can establish rural communes or people can decide that wandering the world is the way they want to live. These aren't the only paths, but I'm going to focus attention here as they seem viable ways of living to begin moving towards regaining our ability to be part of the animal world once again. To no longer control the world as we seek to no longer control each other.
A commune may be a farming community and with that type of life, there still is agricultural toil to keep the crops going and perhaps some will still domesticate animals for food or clothing. If the commune still has a relationship with urban areas, they may feel a need to produce enough food not just for themselves, but also those that live in the cities.
To transport food, certainly a commune could have members that move it. But food could also be transported by traveling nomads. Nomads could come to communes in need of assistance, giving extra hands to tasks to keep the commune maintained. Offering food, clothing, shelter and human relationships in exchange. As mentioned before, the amount reciprocated may not be equal nor is it necessary to think this would be the case. A life as a nomad seems to have the ability for much joy. Unlike the gather-hunter, they hold a symbiotic relationship with others, though others today may claim it is probably parasitic.
-----------
I posted a little from the wikipedia entry on nomads to get a better picture of how they behave. Part of what I learned is that a breakdown of domination increases either a return to nomadic ways of life (for those from traditional nomadic cultures) and may very well open up this path as new for those that don't. Another is that nomadic ways of life are indeed symbiotic with the surrounding civilization, reacting to how much land the civilization has with how they live. Nomadic ways of life were initially a reaction to the rise of agriculture with gatherer-hunters displaced by agricultural groups. Nomads may mix farming and herding with foraging, hunting in some ways....in others, they will create goods or offer skills as they move about.
What this means is that it is logical to assume it is very possible that Nomadic ways of life will become far more common with the abolition of work. The less the nomad is displaced by agriculture, the more likely it is for them to fall into gatherer-hunter ways of life.
It is logical to assume that the ultra-concentration of populations in cities would break down rapidly after work is abolished. A fear I have is the urban populations will react to this rapid change in life with the creation of a new social order to force work....if "communist" with centralized councils planning how municipals function (at the least), they may even enforce a type of slavery to defend cities from breaking down. As this is speculation, I will assume it to be bad faith to assume this happening.
However, one of the reasons I am "for" the dictatorship of the proletariat is because I believe it is logical to assume a forceful mass may be created that will not only destroy capitalist social relations to create communism....but may also destroy other ways of life to ensure this creation. If it is shown that the abolition of work is not compatible with communism, then communism is not anarchy.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to be a very brief period of life, but from talking with various (anti-state or left) communists, it is very possible that organizations of centralized coordination will be created to ensure the communist way of life. As that way of life is still based on the proletarian interpretation of value, the proletarian life and its destruction of capitalism may still be subjectively based on a proletarian class forcing its values upon society. This would mean the civilization of cities may be considered essential and a breakdown of the urban infrastructure and ability for goods to be transported into cities would seem necessary.
This could be interpreted in other ways:
1.) Because the proletarian class moves from subjected to subject, it is still dictatorship of the proletariat, so communism has not been created. Instead it is socialism.
2.) People will consider this communism and other ways of life seen as a bourgeois threat to communism, thus counter-revolutionary.
3.) Because a social order has been created, it is neither dictatorship of the proletariat (socialism) nor is it communism. It is another form of class rule that may also see a need for commodities, markets and other functions that creates a new style of economy that may be consider capitalist, feudalist or other way of life detrimental to the aboliton of work.
4.) Something else.
---------------
So to challenge domestication we have to be born again. Starting a new life as the self we desire. Our relationships today are not the ones we will hold tomorrow. The end of domination, the end of the dominant order, is the abolition of markets, work and commodities. The world we have is abundant. It is wealthy with all the things we need in this world.
By ridding ourselves of the people, forces and institutions that put us in our present predicament, the whole world will be ours for the taking. We can build the lives that we desire and for us, those that want to roam the world, there is much that we can experience.
Seeking new relationships, we can connect with others that feel the same as we do. We recognize that not all people want to uproot themselves and see the vastness of the world in the way we do. It may be safer to assume most are satisfied finding there needs within the boundaries already established. This is for those that want another way. This is for those that want to experience a life of adventure and mystery.
When systems fall, the nomadic way of life sees a resurgence. Much of this could be assumed by carrying historic cultures that were suppressed under the old order, then with the fall of the old order, people return to their remembered traditions. For others, the fancy of a life on the roads holds no other purpose than that of desire. And still others, curious, decide it might be worth giving up on sedentary ways of life and embarking on a quest to see where the barriers of life may begin.
It is my desire to begin pointing out how nomads are a life presented with limits, to where the expansion of agriculture forced many gatherer-hunter cultures to move from a wild way of life to a life where one foot rested in a relationship with domestication while the other rested on the open road. This in no way is a proposal that nomads are an expression of egalitarianism or absolute freedom. It is one that hopes to express that should the dominant order be ended, a nomadic life might be an approach anarchists and anarchist primitivists take in the process of rewilding themselves in the world.
--------------
To generate a coherent anarchist primitivist position, there might be a way to move much of the dialogue into the present.
John Zerzan has brought forth the enemy of anarchist primitivism: The dominant order. The dominant order defends civilization. The point of anarchist primitivism isn't to destroy civilization, as is often posited. It is to destroy the power of the dominant order. This means anarchist primitivism aims to attack the relationships of power, like most anarchists. This is far different than attacking the physical existence of civilization or playing into the narratives of hope-for-collapse.
If anarchist primitivism is against the dominant order and aims to create new relationships, we must "wild" rather than "rewild". We must change the discourse from "returning to" to "transforming towards". We must accept the lack of perfection in the human experience. Challenging the power of institutionalized language is far different from attempting to destroy language. Challenging the relationships that create technology is different from destroying the physical existence of technology.
As many anarchists posit, we aren't aiming to create our new society now, but we are attempting to forge new relationships that can carry the birth of destruction. That can carry the breaking of the old relationships within their own connected design. An insurrection, which is a relationship of destruction, aims to challenge the old relationships and an insurrection that anarchists are for aims to challenge the old relationships in a way that would destroy these old relationships in favor of forging a path into the future.
If we wild ourselves, we are learning ways to enter the wildness, to create wildness. This would mean challenging wilderness, which is where the relationships of the dominant order protect the reserves of world environments for its future use. It is a giant garden, a giant park, a plaything for the vacations of people that want to take a break from work. It is a part of leisure to wander these forests, these deserts, these ecologies outside the urban/rural framework.
To wild, we must learn to forage, learn how to connect with the wild spiritually as well as physically, understand the lives of our nonhuman neighbors so we might co-exist with them, sometimes as predator, sometimes as prey, sometimes as symbiotic, sometimes as parasitic, sometimes as host and sometimes as co-wanderers of the wild.
To wild, we recognize we are stepping out of a domesticated existence. We are the domesticated attempting to become something else. We will always carry our domesticated lives with us when we wild. We can try to wild as much as we can, but we will always be a domesticated being desiring a feral existence.
To wild means we can begin our travels on the domesticated highways and biways in search of the limits of our lives under the dominant order and understand those limits. We can see that what we want are relationships that can't be forged until the dominant order is gone. Even then, we that attempt to wild will remain beings with only the beginning knowledge of what it is like as the Earth reclaims us as part of it rather than the dominators of it. We that wild will not be able to destroy the wilderness so the wild can exist, but we can destroy the dominant order that controls the wilderness so the wildness can exist.
The dominant order and its power relations are the target. With the aboliton of work, civilization itself may begin slowly disintegrating and it is also my hope to show a way this may occur. It is also my desire to present how anarchy or communism may not actually abolish work because doing so could cause fear of the unknown and create a desire for the management of urban centers (i.e. the cities), compelling work to prevent a perceived threat to the fabric of society, whether true or imagined. Both scenarios may be weighed on, but will also be pointed out that it is speculative to view the present state of people as what will be in the future. Destruction of the dominant order also means destruction of the old relations of society. The forging of new relations in this process is also part of this process.
It is also my desire to expose that present resistance can begin to adapt two intentional communities for the sake of a resistance culture: The Nomadic and the Agricultural Commune. These ways of life need not emulate the past and perhaps would be better off to start such communities with the mindset of being for the destruction of the dominant order to shape their development. Last, it is my hope that using these two ways of life I can expose how they can hold a mutual relationship with each other and perhaps also share a mutual relationship with urban communes and other group/event/situations as they attempt to grow the momentum of subverting the dominant order.
-----------------
This is some beginning thoughts on a proposal for another anarchist primitivism. Mired in debates now considered old, divisive, laced with sectarianism and logical fallacy, anarchist primitivism, as an anarchist tendency, has been on the decline while various tendencies of anti-leninist/pro-situationist insurrectionary communism, insurrectionary anarchism, egoism and some forms of left anarchism have increased.
While platformist/specificist left anarchism has typically presented the largest criticism of anarchist primitivism, its tendency has declined in influence while anarchist syndicalism seems to be rising. In addition to this, a quick search of anarchist primitivist criticism quickly shows that platformist anarchist is not the only host of critique. Pro-situationists, insurrectionary anarchists, even nihilist anarchists have come out against various views of anarchist primitivism. While much of these criticisms are founded on misunderstandings, misinterpretation and abusing logical fallacies, it is clear that anarchist primitivism, as a tendency, has lost some major battles by not answering these criticisms.
In the United States, the IWW may be gaining ground as Occupy is either declining or transforming. Nihilist anarchists, on the flip side, are also gaining interest influenced by groups like the Informal Anarchist Federation of Europe and Latin America. The Coming Insurrection and Tiqqun gives libertarian Marxists and anarchists a second wind with attempts to call the existing resistance that once thought of itself as part of the Occupy movement a new thought, the thought of commune. These attempts to define their movements of attack as commune perhaps have captured the narrative of anarchists like no other present tendency. Whether these were the last throes of Occupy at its most militant and radical or whether these movements are preparing for another round of activity is still uncertain.
Repression after the NATO protests in Chicago has generated a new fear. A voice of Crimethinc attempts to show that a pattern of repression exists while I propose that the pattern only exists because the dominant order manufactures its existence. Even if anarchists were not attempting radical or militant activity, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies would still look through our population for signs of dissent to prop up and knock down.
It is the Summer of 2012 and several protests are lined up with the threat of the United State's first black president being voted out of power taking the momentum anarchists have generated and channeling this momentum towards efforts to defend the establishment from Republican hyperbole. The main stream media's recrafting of the Occupy movement's narrative as attempting to remove corporate money from politics is a difficult narrative to defeat as the curious seek out avenues of dissent.
This is where we are presently and anarchist primitivism has only played a marginal role in affairs, focusing more attention on another marginal movement, the deep green resistance movement, than on attempting to keep relevance in the present dialogue. John Zerzan's radio show, Anarchy Radio, speaks positively of the black bloc tactic, as do his guests. The Wild Roots Feral Futures gathering has already occurred, perhaps re-energizing the green anarchist movement, but will it do so in favor of anarchist primitivism or deep green resistance? This I'm uncertain of.
However, the loudest voices of green anarchy don't capture larger imaginations. It keeps attaching itself with views that look backwards rather than present-creating-future. Mired in activism and activist tactics, grasping to American indigenous movements without criticism, the voices for "decolonize" maintain white guilt (i.e. colonizer) viewpoints whether intentional or not. This creates the same problems as nationalism and only resists being pushed back rather than pressing forward. The values of yesterday, the values of today, will be destroyed in the crafting of values of tomorrow.
This sentimentality is found only in the losing vestiges of old culture not yet eliminated or assimilated into the dominant order. Certainly there is much that can be learned from these fading cultures and forgotten ways of life, but it is conservative to keep on about it. Meanwhile there is much more going on.
-------------
To move forward the discourses of anarchist primitivism it may be necessary to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the positions of its proponents and attempt to reconcile them with views that further strengthen the tendency. Opponents to anarchist primitivism have often gone out of their way to show bad faith, misquote, slant views and generally abuse logical fallacies in order to paint anarchist primitivism as a view hostile to people rather than hostile to civilization, hostile to systems of domination.
During the period where anarchist primitivist discourses were formed, there was a lot of focus from green movements on a civilization-ending collapse with entire movie genres focused on dramatizing such events and how they may result. Proponents of anarchist primitivism often accepted collapse as an inevitability, with some deciding to halt any sort of challenge to the present order and instead seek ways to successfully survive a scenario of collapse.
To survive as an anarchist primitivist, one would take on many ideas and views of previous primitivist societies and emulate their behaviors. The aim is mainly to produce a potential for the growth of gatherer-hunter bands that would be able to return to the wild of Earth when a collapse occurs. Even those that don't give collapse much merit present the gatherer-hunter life as a desirable one that is far less alienated than present society, so living as a gatherer-hunter, even partially, is wanted more than living in a technological egalitarian society. The process of becoming a gatherer-hunter is often referred to as rewilding.
Rewilding is a challenge to a civilization-based mindset often referred to as domestication. It is an attempt to offer skillshares and discussions that would expose a civilized mindset and why it is not desirable to continue living as civilized beings. Understanding wild foods, gatherer-hunter shelter-building, the use of tools, approaches to hunting, the lack of a specialized social structure, the use of spirituality and direct knowledge to understand the world around all are part of the process of rewilding.
--------------
However, the very basis of a collapse is teleological and scientific. In a way, by presenting the horror story of collapse, they have also contributed to the very technological system anarchist primitivists seek to overcome. Green technologies created by the supporters of the social order and various decentralized alternatives to the present technological system have attempted to develop in response to the threat of a collapse scenario. So yes, by saying that civilization will end, some anarchist primitivists and others that made collapse a point of discourse have scared the very systems of control into considering ways of controlling better to avoid collapse and/or to survive collapse.
By presenting the gatherer-hunter as the only unalienated being, anarchist primitivists have also contributed to marginalizing their own position. Again, civilization is made into a monster that inevitably grows in population despite the individual wishes of those that live in such a society. It presents any future with civilization as an alienated existence that can't defeat its own problems that will draw it into destroying the world and/or destroying its society. It also makes the society of civilizations seem unwilling or distant from its own ability to change its ways so that its methods of control can take on new forms that reduce their impact on the world.
While we can claim civilization as it is presented today having major problems, simply things like the education of women and offering of contraceptives show advanced nations on a slow population decline. This decline in the United States and Europe has created a reason to demand migrant work despite the desires of the greater population. This isn't to say all of the world is on a population decline at present. There is still many many nations that grow in ways that make the inevitability of population booms still seem a very real possibililty. But also, the present order has made it also possible to see this does not have to be the case and it is fallacy to say otherwise. Populations can reduce voluntarily, especially with female education (emancipation from a purely servile position in a family structure) and spread of contraceptives and other forms of birth control, both voluntarily and no so.
These declines in population present another world where the forced servitude of females may be seen as necessary in some future nation-states to continue competition in a world market and while this type of control is another form of alienation, it helps expose that other narratives of control that aren't seen at present are possible and show the threat of population size growing beyond the ability of the present order as not a point that is fully tenable.
------
The argument about population is clearly not the only reason for collapse to possibly occur. Other catalysts are necessary. Scarcity and how to overcome this problem could be argued and at present, we might not have a workable solution offered by the dominant order. However, my use of population is more a vehicle to move the discussion forward, to show that anarchist primitivism's use of collapse as an immediate threat is not a good reason to present anarchist primitivist as a viable option. If collapse is a more distant problem, a problem that goes into the realm of the unknowable, we still have many other problems with the present order that make the destruction of the present order a more immediate desire.
The threat of collapse may paralyze people that might otherwise find reason to attack. It served and perhaps still serves a good vehicle to learn more about how to become like a gatherer hunter and challenge the domesticated mindset that keeps society tied to civilization. But with it having less of a logical foundation, we can have other discussions. There are other lifeways besides gathering and hunting that can be discussed that don't necessarily continue the web of control technology has become, should its totality end.
There are ways of life that can be desired that can end present civilization and open avenues for a move towards gather hunter life through a generational approach. There are also ways of living that might not return society to pure gathering and hunting as it was practiced for thousands of years, but can still co-exist in a relative amounts of peace. This document isn't about presenting these alternatives (at least not at this moment), but rather it is an attempt to expose an attempt to move anarchist primitivism in a direction that is less scientist-founded and perhaps more desire/will-founded.
It isn't because gathering and hunting is the answer to our existence that we seek to destroy the present order, but it can be one of the many ways of living that can be sought should we destroy the present order. Rewilding and challenging domesticated ways of life is a path that is enjoyable. Removing human control over the wild is a process that must be wanted. Not because humanity is sacred, but because convincing humanity is possible should seek to free ourselves from systems of domination.
If we seek to destroy how society is controlled and create new relationships in this process, the need to control the wild to maintain undesirable ways of life may also end. People won't need to crawl around in mines and chop down forests to produce commodities. People can become open to discussions on how to interact with the world and aim to live life in sync rather than in control.
--------------
Anarchist Primitivist Methodology
One of my primary concerns is exposing the methodology of anarchist primitivism. While there are so many misconceptions surrounding the position, some completely fabricated and others slanted, it becomes confusing as to what is possible within this theory. This is an attempt to start speculating on possible ways to incorporate approaches that take into account much of anarchist primitivist theory.
Commune Civilization as rewilding
For the most part, using the origins gatherer-hunters as well as studying present day versions of this type of living show that many of the accepted social mores in society are questionable. The work ethic, religion, how society can be maintained and so on can be challenged, not just from this viewpoint, as if we must look backwards constantly to know what we are missing out on, but also looking to a present way of approaching the world.
When we rewild, it comes with the understanding that it is limited. Like urban gardening can't provide a fully sustainable method of agriculture for an urban population without massified systems which the social order would have to create, gathering and hunting also is not sustainable with mass participation. A society that is for anarchist primitivism, yet still stuck with massive population sizes would have to examine ways to reduce population and the amount of area used to maintain civilization. It would still need a technological system to achieve its goals, which would also entail a controlling behavior on the population, whether voluntary or coercive.
Breaking global economic interdependence on a massive scale and moving towards more autonomous living that requires less exchange of necessities would also require a massive management system starting from the municipal level in a confederal approach. Agricultural methods would still need vast amounts of land, though by reducing technological maintenance more people could move to commune styled living and assert their technological autonomy...deciding smaller systems of technology through a sharing of knowledge and using renewable resources that can be found in the local area as much as possible, the first few generations of commune living would be able to eventually free themselves from systems of interdependence if population levels continue to reduce.
If more localizing systems are embraced with voluntary eugenics, the commune civilization can slowly scale back, migrating into other communes to maintain when population levels drop so far that they can no longer reasonably maintain themselves. Meanwhile, rewilding, wandering, adventuring, nomadism, horticultural and other partial gatherer-hunter lifestyles could be encouraged to ensure the survival of existing sedentary communes, with some perhaps falling into gather-hunter lifestyles as the amount of area controlled by the commune civilization continues to reduce.
So a commune civilization would need Nomads to continue bringing material necessities that merchants used to handle. It would need a continued education on eugenics and why voluntary population reduction helps achieve the goal of create a smaller impact on the world. It would need a growing education on rewilding, with many communes perhaps rotating roles between gatherer-hunter and commune farmer. Finally, it would need a respect for gather-hunter territorial behavior or complete human abandonment of permanent occupation in the wild.
Problems with this approach are still the levels of management to achieve these goals and the ability to measure population reductions. Systems of technology would slow to a crawl or reverse as technological progress aims towards the dismantlement of civilization. Further problems would still exist as people may decide that returning to technology and progress is viable and egalitarian, they may place significance on an area and the ancestry of those that exist on it being sacred.
All of this is speculative, but this draft has been done with the idea that society has the potential to slowly rid itself of civilization. If not completely negate it, there might be a way to find a happy medium where natural living can be combined with agricultural living in various mixes. We might not ever achieve a fully unalienated way of life with such combinations, but we could have a free society that can practice life as they would like to. It would involve the abolition of work, with a reduction in the amount of labor needed to where desire and necessity would meet each other rather than compelled to a hierarch's conception of greatness at the cost of free will.
--------------
Towards Gatherer-Hunter: Early Generation - The Commune and the Nomad
It seems that in the process of challenging out domesticated lives we run into the wall of control that shows the vast number of limitations that prevents us from moving completely into the world we desire. Even in a world free of work, commodities and markets, we are still left with the after effects of the previous society. Nuclear power plants that need to be slowly ran down as to prevent melt down. Establishing a new infrastructure for human waste to prevent the continued poisoning of water and to remove the rationale of it already being poisoned, thus justifying other wastes to be dumped into lakes, oceans, rivers, streams.
Much of the green technology movement may have thought of and considered these possibilities, but their concept is more on alternative rather than reduction of these features. Without coercive labor, we recognize that much of this change in life would have to be grappled with. Technological infrastructure that relies on interdependent resources, like rare minerals, would slowly fall apart in a matter of years. Power plants, substations, water treatment plants, roads, sewers, these too may fall into disrepair. So we may be left with the idea that we may need to feel compelled to maintain these things to keep urban life going or we would feel compelled to abandon the large cities and find another way of doing things.
We can begin doing this now and for some, this is already occurring. I present the idea that the gather-hunter can be realized through the sharing of the commune and the nomad.
---------------
Again, I'll address the issue that what I'm doing is speculating on the future based on some given information from the present. With the abolition of work, what people are capable of voluntarily doing is still rather questionable. People sometimes forget we react to our environment and as our environment changes, we change with it. Heroes come into existence that challenges the idea of a self-centered egoism, showing an egoism that goes beyond, that appears altruistic to those more disposed to seeing a selfless desire come from individuals. My claim is that people are selfish, but what selfishness is to one may not be selfishness to others.
So many times I've done things, gone out of my way to help others. I've done so not out of some sense that I am altruistic, but in the sense that my egoism is about affecting the world around me, creating the world I want to live in. To encourage this world, I establish practices in my life that often aren't returned. If one searches for a "mutual aid" in my actions, typically my giving to others is not returned. Perhaps it feeds my narcissism. Perhaps I want to have something on others, so when the chips are down, I can call in favors. Perhaps I want to my effect on society returned to show that I've done a good job. There may be many conscious and unconscious reasons for acting for the sake of others by acting on selfish desires.
So if it seems that a city may starve to death, I might decide to rally others to the mines, to build the roads, to maintain the sewers. For me, such things seem possible. To others, it may seem that mechanisms of decision making need to be established to formalize this behavior. That is not my target. It seems unethical to me to aim for establishing institutions in society. This doesn't mean it won't happen. This also doesn't mean that such a society, though unethical in my view, could mean the re-establishment of a social order. But also it could.
Anyways, let us say that urban life presents an unappealing way to live, even if the cities manage to convince people to voluntarily give their lives to keeping them going. Humanity rallied to the cities because other ways of life were becoming less possible. By ending capitalism, by abolishing work, older ways of life can be opened again. People can again leave the cities and form communities that live lives with less specialization, less dependence on labor that presently seems very unappealing to me.
Going forth, people can establish rural communes or people can decide that wandering the world is the way they want to live. These aren't the only paths, but I'm going to focus attention here as they seem viable ways of living to begin moving towards regaining our ability to be part of the animal world once again. To no longer control the world as we seek to no longer control each other.
A commune may be a farming community and with that type of life, there still is agricultural toil to keep the crops going and perhaps some will still domesticate animals for food or clothing. If the commune still has a relationship with urban areas, they may feel a need to produce enough food not just for themselves, but also those that live in the cities.
To transport food, certainly a commune could have members that move it. But food could also be transported by traveling nomads. Nomads could come to communes in need of assistance, giving extra hands to tasks to keep the commune maintained. Offering food, clothing, shelter and human relationships in exchange. As mentioned before, the amount reciprocated may not be equal nor is it necessary to think this would be the case. A life as a nomad seems to have the ability for much joy. Unlike the gather-hunter, they hold a symbiotic relationship with others, though others today may claim it is probably parasitic.
-----------
I posted a little from the wikipedia entry on nomads to get a better picture of how they behave. Part of what I learned is that a breakdown of domination increases either a return to nomadic ways of life (for those from traditional nomadic cultures) and may very well open up this path as new for those that don't. Another is that nomadic ways of life are indeed symbiotic with the surrounding civilization, reacting to how much land the civilization has with how they live. Nomadic ways of life were initially a reaction to the rise of agriculture with gatherer-hunters displaced by agricultural groups. Nomads may mix farming and herding with foraging, hunting in some ways....in others, they will create goods or offer skills as they move about.
What this means is that it is logical to assume it is very possible that Nomadic ways of life will become far more common with the abolition of work. The less the nomad is displaced by agriculture, the more likely it is for them to fall into gatherer-hunter ways of life.
It is logical to assume that the ultra-concentration of populations in cities would break down rapidly after work is abolished. A fear I have is the urban populations will react to this rapid change in life with the creation of a new social order to force work....if "communist" with centralized councils planning how municipals function (at the least), they may even enforce a type of slavery to defend cities from breaking down. As this is speculation, I will assume it to be bad faith to assume this happening.
However, one of the reasons I am "for" the dictatorship of the proletariat is because I believe it is logical to assume a forceful mass may be created that will not only destroy capitalist social relations to create communism....but may also destroy other ways of life to ensure this creation. If it is shown that the abolition of work is not compatible with communism, then communism is not anarchy.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to be a very brief period of life, but from talking with various (anti-state or left) communists, it is very possible that organizations of centralized coordination will be created to ensure the communist way of life. As that way of life is still based on the proletarian interpretation of value, the proletarian life and its destruction of capitalism may still be subjectively based on a proletarian class forcing its values upon society. This would mean the civilization of cities may be considered essential and a breakdown of the urban infrastructure and ability for goods to be transported into cities would seem necessary.
This could be interpreted in other ways:
1.) Because the proletarian class moves from subjected to subject, it is still dictatorship of the proletariat, so communism has not been created. Instead it is socialism.
2.) People will consider this communism and other ways of life seen as a bourgeois threat to communism, thus counter-revolutionary.
3.) Because a social order has been created, it is neither dictatorship of the proletariat (socialism) nor is it communism. It is another form of class rule that may also see a need for commodities, markets and other functions that creates a new style of economy that may be consider capitalist, feudalist or other way of life detrimental to the aboliton of work.
4.) Something else.
---------------
So to challenge domestication we have to be born again. Starting a new life as the self we desire. Our relationships today are not the ones we will hold tomorrow. The end of domination, the end of the dominant order, is the abolition of markets, work and commodities. The world we have is abundant. It is wealthy with all the things we need in this world.
By ridding ourselves of the people, forces and institutions that put us in our present predicament, the whole world will be ours for the taking. We can build the lives that we desire and for us, those that want to roam the world, there is much that we can experience.
Seeking new relationships, we can connect with others that feel the same as we do. We recognize that not all people want to uproot themselves and see the vastness of the world in the way we do. It may be safer to assume most are satisfied finding there needs within the boundaries already established. This is for those that want another way. This is for those that want to experience a life of adventure and mystery.
When systems fall, the nomadic way of life sees a resurgence. Much of this could be assumed by carrying historic cultures that were suppressed under the old order, then with the fall of the old order, people return to their remembered traditions. For others, the fancy of a life on the roads holds no other purpose than that of desire. And still others, curious, decide it might be worth giving up on sedentary ways of life and embarking on a quest to see where the barriers of life may begin.
It is my desire to begin pointing out how nomads are a life presented with limits, to where the expansion of agriculture forced many gatherer-hunter cultures to move from a wild way of life to a life where one foot rested in a relationship with domestication while the other rested on the open road. This in no way is a proposal that nomads are an expression of egalitarianism or absolute freedom. It is one that hopes to express that should the dominant order be ended, a nomadic life might be an approach anarchists and anarchist primitivists take in the process of rewilding themselves in the world.
--------------
To generate a coherent anarchist primitivist position, there might be a way to move much of the dialogue into the present.
John Zerzan has brought forth the enemy of anarchist primitivism: The dominant order. The dominant order defends civilization. The point of anarchist primitivism isn't to destroy civilization, as is often posited. It is to destroy the power of the dominant order. This means anarchist primitivism aims to attack the relationships of power, like most anarchists. This is far different than attacking the physical existence of civilization or playing into the narratives of hope-for-collapse.
If anarchist primitivism is against the dominant order and aims to create new relationships, we must "wild" rather than "rewild". We must change the discourse from "returning to" to "transforming towards". We must accept the lack of perfection in the human experience. Challenging the power of institutionalized language is far different from attempting to destroy language. Challenging the relationships that create technology is different from destroying the physical existence of technology.
As many anarchists posit, we aren't aiming to create our new society now, but we are attempting to forge new relationships that can carry the birth of destruction. That can carry the breaking of the old relationships within their own connected design. An insurrection, which is a relationship of destruction, aims to challenge the old relationships and an insurrection that anarchists are for aims to challenge the old relationships in a way that would destroy these old relationships in favor of forging a path into the future.
If we wild ourselves, we are learning ways to enter the wildness, to create wildness. This would mean challenging wilderness, which is where the relationships of the dominant order protect the reserves of world environments for its future use. It is a giant garden, a giant park, a plaything for the vacations of people that want to take a break from work. It is a part of leisure to wander these forests, these deserts, these ecologies outside the urban/rural framework.
To wild, we must learn to forage, learn how to connect with the wild spiritually as well as physically, understand the lives of our nonhuman neighbors so we might co-exist with them, sometimes as predator, sometimes as prey, sometimes as symbiotic, sometimes as parasitic, sometimes as host and sometimes as co-wanderers of the wild.
To wild, we recognize we are stepping out of a domesticated existence. We are the domesticated attempting to become something else. We will always carry our domesticated lives with us when we wild. We can try to wild as much as we can, but we will always be a domesticated being desiring a feral existence.
To wild means we can begin our travels on the domesticated highways and biways in search of the limits of our lives under the dominant order and understand those limits. We can see that what we want are relationships that can't be forged until the dominant order is gone. Even then, we that attempt to wild will remain beings with only the beginning knowledge of what it is like as the Earth reclaims us as part of it rather than the dominators of it. We that wild will not be able to destroy the wilderness so the wild can exist, but we can destroy the dominant order that controls the wilderness so the wildness can exist.